BOCC: Oh My! Flower Thrown Off Upper Ark Water Board, Airport Out of Fuel, HR Proposes Four-Day Work Week
for County Courthouse Employees

by George Gramlich
News and Commentary
We are so blessed this week with having TWO just wonderful BOCC meeetings.

The Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) July 5, 2022 meeting:
All three of our truly royal mighty musketeer commissioners were there: Chair Kevin Day and muskies Bill Canda and Tom Flower. Mercifully, the Commissioner Items,
where our royalty tell us all the wonderful things they have done since the last muskie fest, was short. Even Flower was somewhat brief.
Somewhat.
Day brings up the first item of business: the Upper Arkansas Water Conservation District (“Upper Ark”) sent the commissioners a letter asking them to replace the current BOCC’s ex officio representative, muskie Tom Flower, with another muskie. Day reads the letter. (Basically, Upper Ark doesn’t want an elected official who was just “convicted” of multiple state ethics violations on their board. Fair enough and good move.) There is a slight pause. (Flower knew this was coming.) 

Flower then speaks in a low, growly, somewhat angry tone with “Mr. Senderhauf is behind this.” (Background: Bob Senderhauf is a prominent citizen in town and has done an incredible amount of good for Westcliffe and the county. For a LONG time. He was on the Upper Ark board for decades and was board chair a few years ago. Bob was a former County Commissioner. He is THE expert on water in the county. Flower doesn’t like good men. (Classic Flower.) So, when Flower got elected commissioner a few years ago he, through manipulation, had himself chosen as the Custer County ex officio representative and had Bob vindictively KICKED OFF THE UPPER ARK BOARD! That was a huge loss for the Upper Ark board and for Custer County in general. Now the old Happy Valley “worm has turned”. Peasants to Flower: Karma be good. Sweet dreams…) He then actually says this about himself trying to be sarcastic and ironic, “What a horrible board commissioner I am. I welcome you (i.e,. Canda and Day) to represent me.” (Truer words have never
been said.)
Without any embarrassing discussion, Canda volunteers to take the job. They vote on it and Canda gets it.
Bob McDonald from the Airport Board is next. He gives an overview of a BIG PROBLEM at the SilverWest Airport. He said the airport normally sells around 600 gallons a month in aviation fuel but they had an unprecedented sales spike in June where they sold thousands of gallons and they sold 629 gallons just in the first five days of July. He says they are out of fuel, the pump is shut off, and the next scheduled “split load” delivery is not until September. McDonald said the only way they can get fuel now is to buy a whole load of 8,000 gallons at around $6.27 per gallon. (So we’re talking around $50k.) Plus the BIG air show is coming in August and with no fuel there could be problems (and the county would look like fools).
The muskies, in a tizzy, summon HR/Finance guru head Braden Wilson to the throne room. After a bunch of blah, blah, blah, Wilson is assigned the task of finding $50K for fuel so the county doesn’t look like some backwoods Appalachia hillbilly canton that can’t keep the lights on. (But, alas, read on.)
In a preview of what will come soon, the woman running against Commissioner Canda this fall, a Mistress of the Hard Left, Deb Adams, who is a fairly recent California transplant, AGAIN, indignantly, asks what is the status of the county’s new website since it is not up yet and it is supposed to be. She said she is being harassed by The Sentinel over bringing this up for months. (Bwaaaaaa. She is just looking for political face time.) Day, annoyed over this constant badgering by Custer’s own “Screaming Karen”, says he doesn’t know and IT guy Jordan Benson has left the room. Then silence. (Folks, Adams, a newly announced political operative, is a true believer of the left. Biden and Kamala on steroids. Our local loony lefties LOVE HER. She is doing the smoke grenade, hide your true identity thing by running “unaffiliated” while she is really a hard, hard core lefty. If she gets on the muskie board, you can kiss your way of life and what’s left of your bank account good-bye. VOTE REPUBLICAN this fall. Keep Custer County FREE! We have documentation on her leftist/progressive leanings. More to come about this as the campaigns progress.)
Wilson is up again and says they have three applicants for the Planning & Zoning Director’s job and maybe will have interviews next week. He talks a little about a proposal to have the county’s courthouse employee’s go from a five day to four day work week. This topic will be an agenda item tomorrow.
Road & Bridge says they are not going to do chip seal this year as the cost has skyrocketed.
Planning & Zoning reported that there were 23 septic tank permits and 17 dwelling permits in June. (Which is a LOT.) There was a total of 40 septic permits for the 2nd quarter.
And that was that.
The Custer County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) July 6, 2022 meeting:
All three mighty musketeers were present at the 9 a.m. meeting. No important Commissioner Items, but then the airport fuel problem raises its ugly head again….
Bob McDonald from the Airport Board was up and again gave an overview of a BIG PROBLEM at the Silverwest Airport. He repeats the whole story from yesterday’s meeting about the unprecedented fuel sales surge in June and early July and they are out of fuel now. They need a full load of 8,000 gallons which will cost around $50k. The only fuel they are scheduled to get is a “split load” of 3,000 gallons in September and they can’t get a split load before that. They have the big airport festival coming up in August and it would be superl bad if the airport had no fuel. (Like real embarrassing, folks?) The muskies decide to discuss this later as it is on the agenda.
The landfill report stated that trench E is full but they are continuing operation by adding a state approved two more feet “lift” on another trench. They are awaiting approval by the Denver gnomes so they can dig some more trenches.
Virginia Trujillo from Treasury gave her report. Main item was the Airport fund which is in the red and that has to be fixed.
In New Business the biggy was a proposal, shepherded by Human Resources/Finance honcho Braden Wilson to have the county employees in the courthouse move from a five day workweek to a four day work week. He has been working on this for while with various meetings with employees, department heads and elected officials
Wilson’s proposal would have the work week change to Monday through Thursday with the employees coming to work at 7:30 a.m. and leaving 5:30 p.m. However, the offices would only be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The half hours before and after office open hours would be time for the employees to catch up on paperwork. So, we’re talking four, ten hour days. Wilson says the plus-es for the employees include less driving cost, morale will “soar”, and possible lower energy building costs. Plus employees with kids will have it easier as the school is also closed on Fridays. He says the longer hours will give “greater access” to the peasants.
Bolstering his case, Wilson said Vernon Roth from IT did some informal visitor counting which revealed that Mondays and Tuesdays are the busiest with around 18 visitors a day and Friday is “not that busy” with around 11 visitors.
Wilson said that on the downside, the office would be closed on Friday with the “perception” that offices would be “open less hours”. Also, all things due on Friday would have to be postponed to the next week. The employees would be driving in the dark more coming and going to work. Also, due to the school opening and closing time, there would be problems with dropping the kids off and picking them up at the right times. There is also a problem with the state run courtroom which must be open five days a week.
This of course sets off the muskies into a LONG talkfest with The Flower dominating the discussion with “observations” that basically were, blah, blah, blah, blah. On and on. Somewhere in the mix, he did say something that was surprising: This “change is for the employees and not the county”. Wilson and Canda verbally agree. All three muskies then reveal their past angst and hardship when they worked 10-hour days and somehow they overcame the pain. (It was truly heart rendering.) Flower then continues with more blah, blah, blah. They then discuss how they are going to get feed back from us peasants and that takes a while. Or course Flower mentions that minority groups might try to skew the response. They decide to advertise and maybe have a meeting just on that.
Wilson is up again re the airport fuel debacle. He says the airport fund is “upside down” (that is, in the red) and we need to get money into it TODAY. He then says that the current audit of the new accounting system by an outside company has revealed a “possible delta” of $55k that “we think we might have but might not”. (It sounds like this possible issue is in the General Fund and not the Airport Fund.) Wilson says he is not in favor of using the General Fund money to buy the fuel be-cause we don’t know where that stands with the possible discrepancy. He says the auditors are coming in Tuesday to try to figure this out.
Canda chimes in and says the county is making money on the fuel sales ($.50 per gallon) and that the money from the last tank probably isn’t being reflected in the airport account yet. Wilson, remarkably, then says he is not sure how and where the credit card money from the fuel tank sales winds up in the Treasury Office. This sets off the muskies again. Finally, Day asks Wilson “do we have the money” and Wilson says he’s “not sure”.
Day says “we can’t do it now”. “Don’t have the money.”
The musketeers ask Bob McDonald to try to figure out a way to get a much smaller load. (Bob repeatedly told the muskies during the discussions that it would be virtually impossible to get a partial load without paying a huge price increase and even with that it was highly unlikely.)
(The county has a budget of somewhere around seven to eight million dollars a year. Having NO FUEL at our great airport for TWO months is NOT acceptable. We are only talking $50k which is peanuts in the greater scheme and the county will be MAKING MONEY on it! The big airfest is coming up in August. No fuel there will have a huge impact on that. Figure this one out o’ mighty musketeers. It is not Boolean algebra.)
(Editor/GG: We had a somewhat unexpected visitor at the Sentinel last Friday morning. Jordy (Red Bug) Hedberg, owner/editor of the Wet Mountain Tribune suddenly dropped in and man, was visibly agitated. Princess showed him into the Sentinel’s War Room and we shook hands. RB, who had just read that Friday’s front page article titled, “BOCC: Hedberg Threatens Lawsuit Over Legal Notices” was not a happy camper. RB sits down and basically vents for about 10 minutes about how we are calling him “names” and that he and the Trib are not libs. It was a good rant. There is a pause and I try to talk about how the Sentinel uses humor, sarcasm, satire etc. in our news articles and that has been done since newspapers were invented and people like it. He defends himself a bit more and says the article said he had ripped off the county by overcharging and that was not true. I said the article said the Trib over billed the county “a while back” and that was clearly before he owned it. (And that is what we meant.) RB said you could read it like it was about me and again said RB has only owned the Trib for a few years and “a while back” clearly excludes him. The subject switched to him wearing Covid masks and then he left.
That night, thinking about it, I could see, coming from Red Bug’s perspective, that MIGHT be pos-sible that someone who doesn’t know the Trib’s ownership timeline, MIGHT think we were talking about RB ripping off the county. So to clarify to all our readers, the overbilling was referring to the prior ownership and not RB. There is NO indication at all the Trib did any missbilling while RB has owned it. So, we apologize if anybody took it the wrong way.)
And these were the days of our lives.

UPDATE: 7/22/22 issue

BOCC: New Planning & Zoning
Director, Airport Fuel Update

by George Gramlich
The mighty three musketeers held a special Custer County Board of County Commissioners meeting Tuesday, July 19th. It started at 9 a.m. All three muskies were present: Chair Kevin Day and members Tom Flower and Bill Canda.
There were two items on the agenda: choosing the county’s new Planning & Zoning Director and reviewing the budget and fuel situation at the airport.
HR/Finance head Braden Wilson was first up. He said that he and the muskies interviewed two P&Z applicants last week. (Notably, both applicants were in the throne room to watch the show.) All three commissioners said both applicants were very qualified. After a bunch of talk, they voted to offer the job to “Applicant C” who is Dorothy Carsten.
Wilson was on the hot seat again for the airport agenda item. Wilson says the muskies need to transfer the budgeted amount of $36k from the General Fund to the Airport Fund. He then went on to say that his comments (at last week’s meeting) about the airport running out of fuel might have been taken to imply that the airport management was messing up and that is completely untrue. He said we are working through some issues but the management team there is fine and there were no issues with them. Flower then speaks up and says some of his comments last week might have been construed in the same manner and he didn’t mean that. (Remember the airport ran out of fuel last week and couldn’t get any partial loads until September and with the big Airfest coming up in August there was going to be a problem.)
Flower then asks is the pump still locked?
Canda, surprisingly, then says the airport does now have fuel which shocks the others. Somehow, they did manage to get a partial load of a few thousand gallons. The muskies then vote to transfer $36k to the Airport Fund. All vote “aye”.